The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II

by Holloway Scott, Susan

“Truly,” he said. “There are two sure ways to please His Majesty. One is to make him laugh, and the other—the other is not for you to know yet, poppet. But you’ll see. A little polish by way of education, a little experience, and we’ll make a pretty courtier of you yet. How old are you, eh?”

  “Ten,” I said, wishing he’d remembered such an important fact himself. “Or nearly so.”

  “Oh, aye, I recall it now,” he said, and sighed with gloomy remorse. “I was only eighteen myself when you were born, of an age when I’d no right to be siring any children. I’ll never consent to your marrying so young, sweet. Mark it now and do not forget, for I mean to keep my word.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said, my heart racing with anticipation. I cared not a fig for my unknown bridegroom, floating somewhere in the misty future. I’d more immediate desires. “Do you mean for me to begin at Court now?”

  “Eager to be on with your life, are you?” he asked, his voice still heavy with melancholy. “What do you know of Court?”

  “What you have told me,” I answered promptly. “That it’s all the most beautiful and clever persons in England gathered about His Majesty at the palace, and that it’s the most wondrous place on earth for amusement and entertainments, like the playhouse, only everything’s real.”

  He raised his dark brows. “I reveal such secrets?”

  “You have,” I said, sure he wouldn’t deny it. “Why couldn’t I become a maid of honor?”

  “Who the devil put that notion into you head?”

  “Grandmother Rivers,” I said. “She vowed that to be of service to the queen or to the Duchess of York should be the desire of any young lady who wishes to show her loyalty to the Crown.”

  “Your grandmother is thinking of the Court when she was a girl, a hundred years ago,” Father said. “There’s little honor to being a maid like that now, and the only girls who seek the post are so poor that they need the pitiful dowry that the Crown provides. You, thank God, will not be in that groveling position.”

  This was sobering news to me, yet still I wouldn’t give up. “But why couldn’t I come to Court with you, as your daughter?”

  “Because you’re still too tender for that world,” he said bluntly. “Not all of the king’s Court is wondrous, not by half. The place is ripe with temptation and scandal, and filled with rogues who’d like nothing more than to ravish and debauch you simply from spite toward me.”

  I blushed scarlet. Not all the gossip I’d overheard from servants involved footmen and maids. I’d also listened to enough whispered tattle of our handsome king and his many mistresses that I understood Father’s worries.

  “I’m not a fool, Father,” I insisted. “I’ll not let any rogue debauch me, I swear it.”

  He winced. “I’d rather not hear such words from you just yet, Katherine,” he cautioned. “A maid as young as you—ah, you’ll need more years and seasoning before I’d toss you into those cruel waters, and more time to grow into your beauty before I’ll expect that of you.”

  That was a hopeful kindness. I was painfully aware that I wasn’t the most lovely of children. Beneath my costly gowns I was as thin as a bundle of sticks, and though I was seldom ill, I’d a sallow pallor to my cheeks that made my dark eyes seem too large for my face and my mouth too wide. But I believed Father when he said I’d blossom, and loved him all the more for it. With him to watch over me, why couldn’t I begin my life at Court now?

  “But you said yourself I’d been too long alone in our house, and if Mama leaves, too, I’d—”

  “Katherine, no.” He tipped his head back against the squabs and closed his eyes with a groan. “Merciful God, is there a greater punishment for an old libertine than to have a daughter of his own?”

  “Please, Father, please,” I pleaded softly, resting my hand on his sleeve. “Let me be with you.”

  He sighed again and slowly opened his eyes, regarding me as if he’d never seen me before. In a way, perhaps he hadn’t. As we gazed at each other there in the rocking coach, I realized that I knew as little of him as he did of me.

  “Don’t beg, Katherine,” he said at last. “It’s demeaning in one of your rank, and it permits others to take untoward advantage of you. Let that be your first lesson in the world, yes?”

  “Yes, Father,” I said quickly, not daring to say more from fear I’d displease him further. “That is, no, I shall not beg. Not to you, not to anyone.”

  “I am glad of it,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Are you still in the nursery, or are you with a governess?”

  “Mrs. Robin is my present governess.” I felt it unnecessary to remind Father that he’d employed her himself. Besides, she was only the latest of several such creatures I’d endured, none of them choosing to remain for long in a household with a mad mistress.

  “Is she now?” he said. “Has this Mrs. Robin taught you to read and to write as you should? By my lights that’s all a lady truly requires, for minding her Scripture and her billets-doux. Can you cipher well enough not to be cheated by tradesmen?”

  “Oh, yes,” I assured him, though I likely would have sworn I’d been taught how to fly to the tops of the trees if I’d sensed he’d wished it so. “Mrs. Robin has taught me French, too. But she is not kind, Father. If I do not make my stitchery so neat as to please her, she pricks my fingers with her needle by way of punishment.”

  He frowned and shook his head, and I knew that Mrs. Robin’s time was done. “What need do you have of stitchery, eh? I’m not planning to set you out as apprentice to a seamstress.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I murmured meekly. “That is not my wish, either.”

  “I’ll vow it’s not, my clever little Kattypillar,” he said, laughing. “My daughter a seamstress!”

  His eyes still bright with merriment, he tapped his fingers on the coach’s window, considering, and I held my breath for his judgment. He always wore a heavy gold ring with a carnelian intaglio, and now that stone caught the sun, glinting bright as the gay life I hoped for.

  “Very well, Katherine,” he said at last. “We’ll give this Mrs. Robin her notice, and I’ll play your tutor instead. Does that please you?”

  I nodded eagerly, my palms pressed together with purest joy. Now that he’d made up his mind on this course, his fancy for it seemed to grow, as if my future were some other frolic for him.

  “I’ll take you to Epsom for this fortnight,” he continued, “and other places as it pleases me, and teach you what you’ll need for success in company. If you prove as quick as I expect, then in time we’ll go to Whitehall as well. Here now, what’s this?”

  With a grunt, he bent down to retrieve my doll from where she’d slipped from the seat to the floor of the coach.

  “Poor Lady Cassandra, cast away without a thought!” he said, brushing the doll with the back of his fingers. “I’d sooner expect the moon to drop from the heavens than for you to neglect your dear Lady Cass.”

  Swiftly I reclaimed my doll, smoothing her ruffled skirts and returning her to her place of honor on my lap with my hands linked around her. But Lady Cassandra’s spell over me had been broken. Father was to be my new companion, and I was dazzled by the kind of education he was offering to me. It wasn’t the prospect of a career at Whitehall—for in truth I’d no more notion then of the politics and intrigues that made the royal Court at once both so amusing and so dangerous—but the simpler promise to be more in my father’s company. And for so lonely a child as I, that was more than enough.

  Chapter Two

  EPSOM WELLS, SURREY

  July 1667

  Father and I reached Epsom late that afternoon. I’d been so intent on the horses that I was surprised to find that Epsom itself was not simply a racecourse, but a small town, and a fashionable one at that. Though the buildings were humble, the streets seemed as filled with elegant folk walking about as if we were still in St. James’s Park. This, Father explained, was due to the healthful waters for which the place was famous, and for which
people were willing to travel great distances to drink. From the coach window, I saw the wells where the waters were drawn, and the long lines of men and women waiting to take their pints. The water was reputed to cure most any ailment or complaint by way of a thorough purge, which Father described in such gleeful detail that I giggled, exactly as he’d intended.

  Fortunately such miraculous (if noisome) cures were not for us, at least not on this day. Instead of the public inn I’d been expecting, our coach stopped before a neat small house surrounded by a tall hedgerow and spreading trees whose shade was particularly inviting after our dusty journey. The afternoon had grown very warm. Sweat trickled down my back between my smock and my stays, my fashionable leather gloves clung damply to my hands, and my petticoats seemed heavier than a winter coverlet across my legs.

  “We’ll be lodging here as the guests of Lord Buckhurst, who has hired this house for the summer.” Father blotted his forehead along the front of his periwig before settling his beaver hat atop; being stout, he sorely felt the heat of the day. “Lord Buckhurst is an important gentleman at Court and a favorite of the king, from being heir to the Earl of Dorset. A lord you will do well to please, Katherine. He is also an especial friend of mine, and I’ll thank you to show him your very best manners.”

  At once I imagined this Lord Buckhurst as a stiff-backed peer, old enough to have served the former king. It was easy; my mother’s family was rife with such gentlemen. As Father and I stepped past the footman who held the door, I shrugged away my weariness and composed myself to act as I did before my more ancient Rivers relations.

  “His Lordship is in the garden, Sir Charles,” the footman said, bowing as he took my father’s stick and hat. “He asked that you join him.”

  Father seemed to have no need of the footman to show him the way, leading me himself through the house’s twisting, old-fashioned halls to the chamber that overlooked the garden. The back door was thrown open to catch the summer breezes, and I could hear voices and laughter coming from beyond its threshold. The venerable Lord Buckhurst wasn’t alone. Suddenly shy, I shrank back behind the flaring skirts of Father’s coat, and belatedly I wished I’d not left Cassandra behind in the coach for the servants to bring to my chamber.

  “Faith, Sedley, for once you have kept your word, and about a woman, too,” a gentleman said in an affected drawl. “Even if she is a very small woman, and your daughter at that.”

  “Present her to us, Sid, if you please,” said a second gentleman. “Coax the little dear from her hiding.”

  “Come, pet.” Father set his hand upon my shoulder and gently pushed me forward. “You’ve my word these gentlemen won’t bite. Lord Rochester, Lord Buckhurst, my daughter, Katherine. Make your curtsy, child, though these two sorry rogues scarce deserve the honor.”

  Obediently I seized the sides of my petticoats to spread them as I’d been taught and sank into a deep, respectful curtsy. As a child (and to my relief), I wasn’t expected to speak, not even after Lord Buckhurst languidly gestured for me to rise. Instead I stood on the garden step, stunned into wide-eyed silence by the scene laid out before me.

  A dining table and cushioned armchairs had been brought out under the trees and set upon a large Turkey carpet spread over the grass. Whether the table had been laid for a late dinner or an early supper, I could not tell, but from the number of cast-off dishes and empty bottles—and the jollity of the company—I’d venture that they’d been at it for a good long time, and planned to remain longer still.

  Closest to us was Lord Rochester: astonishingly handsome, with a straight nose and jaw, heavy-lidded eyes, and a sly mouth meant for mockery. Lord Buckhurst’s mien was more coarsely fashioned though also comely, with a longer nose and straight, dark brows. Because of the heat, they’d both shed their periwigs and bared their close-cropped heads in the garden’s privacy, and they’d likewise doffed their jackets, neckcloths, and waistcoats, shoes, and stockings, lolling comfortably with their shirts open at the throat and their sleeves shoved back to their elbows. I’d never before witnessed gentlemen in such indolent, familiar disarray, and it shocked me as thoroughly as if they’d both been naked as Adam in another garden.

  But they weren’t alone. There was an Eve, too, in their lordly garden. Wearing only a smock, a half-laced bodice, and a single petticoat, a small young woman with red-gold curls sprawled across Lord Buckhurst’s lap, her bare legs and feet dangling over his much longer shins. A popular actress named Nell Gwyn, she had been featured in one of the last plays I’d seen with Father, and it startled me to find her here now, without costume or paint. Several flop-eared spaniels lay in the table’s shade, dozing or gnawing on the discards from the table in a manner not far removed from their masters above.

  Lord Rochester waved with an expansive flourish. “Welcome, Mistress Sedley,” he said, his voice thick with wine. “We’re most honored by your presence among us.”

  “Indeed,” Lord Buckhurst said, raising his glass toward me. Copper-haired Mrs. Gwyn slid from his lap and took up the bottle from the table to refill his glass, the red wine cheery in the sunshine.

  “To our fine, fat friend, Little Sid, and his kid,” he said grandly. “Or rather, to Little Sid and his littler kid.”

  This was not the welcome I’d expected, though I curtsied again. I was hot and tired and hungry, and worst of all, I was ill at ease and unsure of where I fit into this peculiar party.

  Father had always been the supreme figure in my life, and I’d never considered him small in size, nor had I heard anyone address him by anything other than Sir Charles. But these gentlemen were not only much taller, even whilst sitting down, but also of a far superior rank to a mere baronet. Were lords permitted rudeness without rebuke? Was that why Father only smiled happily when they spoke to him with such disrespect? If that were so, I could scarce imagine how His Majesty must address his acquaintance. Or was this just another of my lessons toward becoming a courtier?

  “You’ve always threatened to bring your daughter to us, Sid,” Lord Buckhurst said as he considered me, “but I never believed you’d actually act upon it.”

  “You know I never make idle threats,” Father said, shrugging his arms free of his jacket to join them in dishabille. “It was time Katherine began to see more company to ready her for Court, and besides, I couldn’t abandon her any longer at that house.”

  “What, your private madhouse with the lunatic queen?” Lord Buckhurst peered at me as if searching for signs of disorder in my visage. “At least there’s no doubt the girl is yours, and not some Bedlam doctor’s by-blow. Lord, how she favors you, or she would if you hadn’t starved her to her bones. That must come from her mad mother, eh?”

  I could keep mute no longer, not when he spoke so of Mama. I’d be the most disloyal of daughters if I had, and that I couldn’t bear.

  “If you please, my lord, my mother cannot help being mad,” I said, ready to be Mama’s champion. “That’s why she’s going to Ghent with the priests, to see if they can cure her, and it’s barbarous unkind of you, my lord, to mock her for it.”

  Lord Buckhurst heaved an enormous gasp and struck his fist to his heart with such affected surprise that the others all laughed—including, to my relief, my father.

  “God’s blood, Sid,” the earl exclaimed, “but you’ve raised a sharp-tongued little chit!”

  “I do not wish to be a sharp-tongued chit, my lord,” I said, the justness of my cause giving me courage. “I only defend my mother, just as I would defend my father, if he did needs me to do so.”

  Father bent down to kiss me on the forehead, his eyes full of delight. “There now, Buckhurst, how can you fault that?” he fair crowed. “That’s rare spirit, especially in so young a lady.”

  “We mean no harm, little miss, despite what this blustering blow-hard might say,” Lord Rochester said with another world-weary sigh. “We are all mad ourselves to some degree, anyway, as you’ll soon learn for yourself.”

  “What she’ll learn i
s that you’re a pack of bullying drunkards,” Mrs. Gwyn declared. She gave Lord Buckhurst’s arm a poke and he in turn swatted her bottom, which only caused her to laugh. With a couple of graceful little hops, she came to me and made an artfully sweeping curtsy. “I’m Nell Gwyn, sweet, though your father didn’t see fit to introduce us proper for all that we’re the oldest of friends.”

  “I know who you are, Mrs. Gwyn,” I said eagerly. “I’ve seen you at the King’s Theatre, on the stage.”

  “I look different here, don’t I, without all the paint?” She winked broadly at me. She did look different from the actress I’d remembered, the one who’d made whole audiences hang breathless on her next word. She was younger than I’d realized, not more than six or seven years older than I was myself, yet so small that we were nearly the same height. She was as merry as the first of May, her round face rosy and her eyes full of mischief, and she seemed incapable of standing still, ever dancing lightly on her bare feet. “You must call me Nelly like everyone else does, and I’ll call you Katherine, as friends will.”

  I smiled, liking the idea of such a friend. I knew from my father that she was common-born, and she was an actress, which was as much to say she was a whore, and not suitable company for a lady like me. Grandmother Rivers would have been most grievously distressed. But I did not care, and it pleased me endlessly that Father didn’t, either.

  “Thank you, Nelly,” I said, at once shy and proud of this new acquaintance.

  “Thank you, Katherine.” She laughed, and pulled me over to the table. “Now take your fill of whatever you please. There’s no ceremony among us here in the country.”

  She piled a plate high with sliced chicken, pickled eggs, strawberries, and buttered buns, and when I politely protested that it was too much, she added more, and ordered me to eat it. When she poured wine in a glass for me, I looked anxiously to Father for guidance. I’d drunk cider and small beer, as every child did, and a sip of the blessed wine at the rail for Holy Communion, but I’d not been permitted French wine before this.